Pettis twisted the tourniquet rod tighter and tighter but couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. The field medic shook his head. “I still feel a distal pulse. I’m going to have to put a second tourniquet on him.”

“Yeah, he’s leaking like a sieve,” Webb said as he watched a crimson spray gush from his buddy’s leg. Webb applied even more pressure to Maddix’s femoral artery. Nearly all his weight rested atop the crudely amputated leg.

“Wolf-Pack to Base, we have a man down with severe blood trauma. We need a medevac ASAP, over,” Lt. Kirkland said into his field radio. He shook his head. “I’m going to have to go outside. I can’t get a signal in this giant hidey-hole.”

“Hey! He’s trying to sit up!” Webb exclaimed. “Be still, Mad Dog. Don’t try to get up.”

Like Lazarus rising from the dead, Maddix bolted up to a sitting position. His eyelids jerked open. Fear swirled in his bulging eyes. His gaping mouth contorted like a woman giving birth. “Demons!” he screeched. “I can see them! They’re everywhere! I see demons!”

Chapter 1

Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Army Major John Triplett shuffled his notes until he found a group of highlighted questions. They were the same queries he asked his patient in previous sessions, just worded a little differently. Triplett liked to call them his “nut cracking” questions, no disrespect to his patient.

He designed the questions to pinpoint the events and the timeline of their occurrence just before Petty Officer Andrew Maddix encountered his NDE—near death experience.

“Tell me again, Andrew, exactly where do you think the angel took your spirit?” In all his years counseling military personnel, Triplett had never crossed paths with a patient as puzzling as Maddix. The Navy SEAL swore he saw demons during his near-death experience in a cave in Afghanistan’s Khost province.

Maddix sighed and closed his eyes. “It definitely wasn’t heaven. The angel led me through a passageway and into a cavernous room. We stood on the precipice of a high bluff and looked down into a fiery abyss. The abyss stretched for as far as I could see and contained a body of flames as vast as an ocean. And the flames gave off a repulsive odor.”

“Can you describe the smell?”

Maddix nodded. “It smelled like sulfur.”

Triplett wrote down “brimstone” in the margin of his notes. “Do you think the cave you just mentioned was the same one you and your SEAL team were in when you stepped on the land mine?”

“I’m not sure. I just know I didn’t see any of the other guys.”

Triplett removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his thin nose. “But you said in one of our other sessions that when your spirit first lifted from your body that you looked down and saw your team medic tying a tourniquet around your leg.”

“Yeah, I did. But then the angel came and took me away and we were alone.”

“Did the cave you and the angel were in look natural or manmade? And was it composed of granite or sandstone?”

“It looked natural. And the walls were reddish. I guess it was sandstone.”

Triplett chewed on one stem of his reading glasses. “Is there anything else about the geography of the cave that you find memorable?”

Maddix nodded. “There wasn’t a ceiling to it. I could see sky above me.”

Triplett leaned forward. This was a new admission that might just lead to something. “So the cave might actually be a slot canyon?” Triplett noticed confusion drift across Maddix’s face. “Are you familiar with slot canyons, Andrew?”

Maddix shook his head. “Aren’t they just big cracks in the earth?”

“Not exactly, but close,” Triplett said. He grabbed his laptop off his desk and ran a Google search on slot canyons. He selected the best image and handed the laptop over to Maddix. “A slot canyon is a narrow canyon formed by the cutting action of wind and water. They can sometimes be more than a thousand feet deep and only three feet in width. There are hundreds of slot canyons in the Southwestern United States. Utah has the most of them, I think,” Triplett said. “Anyway, does the image on my laptop look like the cave you were in?”

Maddix nodded, his face losing color. “It could very well be the same one.”

“Tell me again how far you traveled inside the cave before you came to the chasm.”

Maddix handed the laptop back to Triplett. “It seemed like a long ways. I’m guessing a mile or two, maybe.”

“Were you walking or floating?”

Maddix closed his eyes again. “I was walking. The angel kind of hovered alongside me.”

“You were alone with the angel?”

“Yes.”

“What did the angel look like?”

“He looked like a man in his prime. He was very tall and wore a white cloak that seemed to glow.”

“Did he have wings and a halo?”

Maddix snapped open his dark eyes and shot Triplett a glowering look. “Are you making fun of me, sir?”

Triplett shivered. “No, Andrew, I would never do that. All I’m trying to do is help you. I can’t do that without a clear picture of everything you experienced. Some of these questions are redundant and silly, I know. But clues can hide in obvious places. And sometimes I have to be very specific to make progress.”

Maddix nodded. “He didn’t have a halo or wings. Like I said, he looked like a man, only aesthetically perfect. And there was something about him that emanated tremendous power and holiness.”

“Did the angel say anything to you? Did he explain what was happening to you?”

Maddix closed his eyes for the third time. He shifted his prosthetic leg to a more comfortable position. “The angel said I had been chosen to view the home of Satan and his demons, and the people he deceived.”

“Did he say why you were chosen?”

Maddix nodded his head slowly. Sweat beaded on his brow. He opened his eyes and looked at Triplett wildly. “The angel said…”

Triplett shifted forward. He sat on the edge of his seat. If he leaned forward any more he would fall to the floor. “The angel said what?”

“That I was chosen before the beginning of time to lead a resistance against Lucifer.”

“You’re confiding all sorts of new things to me today, Andrew. Why have you waited until our last session to tell me these things?”

“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy,” Maddix confessed. He paused for a moment. “So do you think I’m a nutcase, sir?”

Triplett put his glasses back on. “No, Andrew, I really think you’re as sane as the next guy or me for that matter. Having a NDE and OBE—out of body experience—doesn’t make you crazy. But they can drive you to insanity trying to figure out what they are and what causes them.”

“What do you think they are?”

Triplett smiled and shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. “There are a number of theories out there. But I’m afraid none of them will satisfy you, Andrew. Personally, I believe NDEs may be a combination of lucid dreaming and hypoxia. At some point you may want to talk to an oneirologist. They could probably help you more than I can.”

“What is an oneirologist?”

“Someone that analyzes dreams and tries to interpret what they mean.”

“But I wasn’t dreaming, sir. This was different. I was clinically dead and my soul briefly detached itself from my body.”

“Lucid dreams are many times so realistic that they’re hard to distinguish from reality.”

“It strikes me as odd that the very people trying to explain away near-death experiences have never experienced a NDE.”

“You’re right, Andrew, I’ve never had one. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers you’re looking for. I can only give you my humble opinion. Look, no one is disputing the existence of NDEs. Millions of people have experienced them. NDEs are an accepted phenomenon. It’s the cause behind them that the scientific community can’t agree on.”